Installing SNIP on Windows

The Windows installer for SNIP can be obtained on this page.  Simply double click on it and follow the directions.

Installing the Ubuntu version of SNIP, try this article.

Installing

Note: The Same download image is used for all versions of SNIP.  The different features are enabled based on your machine’s license file, obtained during registration. The value xxx in the example below denotes the release revision of SNIP for that installer.

SNIP_installer

The installer follows the normal flow by presenting several “wizard” screens…

Installer_Screen1

You can accept the default location values provided by the installer.

Where your data is stored can be configured in SNIP.  When using SNIP as a data logger, log files can become quite large even when compressed (>40meg/day/station or more).

Installer_Screen3-wheresave

 

After the installation is complete, shortcuts to you SNIP will be created on desktop and start menu.  Click either to launch the program for the first time.   For more useful tips and information on running SNIP for the first time, check out this article.

A high level overview to SNIP‘s GUI and control tabs is provided by this article.


 

Next Steps

Now that the program is installed, you can evaluate its features further, adding connections and user accounts as you see fit. SNIP will operate in evaluation mode for up to one hour.  After the evaluation period, most functionalities will cease.  All the settings and data that  you have created will be saved and reused the next time the program starts, but the one hour limit will remain.  See the articles under the “getting started” topic area for how to connect to various data streams.

In time you will want to register SNIP.  This process will provide you with a permanent license file for your installation and remove the one hour limit.  A range of options are available from a community or Lite (free) to an Enterprise level product with differing features.   Most moderate sized networks will want the Basic or Pro levels.  Please see the product pages here for details of the checkout process to obtain a product key.

You can register a Lite copy directly from SNIP itself; see the Help Menu, and the Registration… menu item. For other levels, you will need the product key provided by the above web process to proceed.

How to Register your copy of SNIP


 

 

Some Installation Details

The SNIP tool does not use the Windows registry at all, but keeps a separate *.ini file for such details. As a server device, it will need to open a port (typically 2101) to service client connections.  Your firewall software will likely prevent this the first time the tool runs unless you allow it.  SNIP also has a self-contained mail agent which is used to send status reports to you as the owner/operator, and also used to send login details to new users when you create them.  Secure relays operated by SCSC distribute your mail to your users while blocking abuse.  Some firewall programs may prevent sending mail from SNIP.

The SNIP software is installed and saves files in several places as noted below.

The default place where SNIP will be installed is:

C:/Program Files (x86)/SNIP/

The default place where SNIP will store various data files is:

C:/Program Files (x86)/SNIP/bin/data/

You can change this location under the Logs menu; see the menu item Data File Settings…  for details.  As a recommended best practice, select a folder on a disk with capacity for your data log needs.  A typical 24 hour set of 1Hz RTCM observations will require 30~60 megabytes per daily file, uncompressed, and about 20 megabytes once compressed.

Depending on your Windows  installation settings, the operating system may prevent all your application programs from writing data files alongside where they are located.  This includes your SNIP installation.  Window 7 and on-wards will “ghost” these files to another path unless you set the user permissions to allow file writing and control privileges into the application directory.  Also note that if you do this, the file formerly written to the ghost directory will be “auto-magically” moved to the original location. As long as you know where the operating system has placed your files, this is simply an annoying “feature” that Microsoft provides.

For the large storage needs and post processing needs, SNIP makes a very solid data recorder.  See this article on how to setup SNIP to compress your files and then send them to a remote FTP site for long term storage.

An mentioned above, you can select the location where these files are saved.  On personal PCs we often use

C:\Users\yourName\Documents\RTCM_data

The various details of your user settings are kept in an *.ini file which by default is placed in the below file.  There is no need to ever edit this file, and if you remove it a new empty file will be created as if you had never run the tool before.

C:\Users\yourName\AppData\Roaming\SCSC\simpleNTRIP.ini

In all of the above path examples “yourName” is your user name on the machine.

 

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